This online exhibition and teacher resource features the calendar
drawings of Kiowa artist and calendar-keeper Silver Horn. The
images
depict key events in the history of the Kiowa people between
1828 and
the winter of 1928-29. The descriptions were prepared by Candace
Greene, ethnologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington
D.C.

In the traditional Kiowa calendar, each
year is represented by two
images – one for the summer and one for the winter. The
events
depicted are agreed upon by tribal elders and drawn and maintained
by designated tribal calendar-keepers, like Silver Horn. The
calendar
records were originally kept on hides or cloth, but eventually
were
copied into ledgers.

Silver Horn was born in 1860 (“The Summer That Bird Appearing
was
Killed,” according to his calendar). Both his father and
older brother
also were calendar-keepers for the tribe. He was a prolific artist,
and created hundreds of drawings representing Kiowa history and
tradition before his death in 1940.

This calendar was donated to the Sam Noble
Oklahoma Museum of Natural
History in 2001 from the estate of Nelia Mae Roberts, who ran
an
Indian trading post in Anadarko. The museum subsequently received
a
Save America’s Treasures Grant that provided for the conservation
and
restoration of the calendar’s fragile pages by a professional
paper
conservator. The process took over a year, and the restored pages
went
on display for the first time in the museum from May 1 through
Aug.
23, 2009. For conservation reasons, the calendar has now been
returned
to the safety of the museum’s ethnology collections, but
the images
can still be viewed and studied through this online exhibition.

Only one other full Silver Horn calendar is known to exist today.
It
was created by Silver Horn in 1904 specifically for the archives
of
the Smithsonian Institution and covers the period from 1828 through
1904.

Credits: The conservation and preservation of the Calendar
Record benefitted from a generous grant from the Save America’s
Treasures Program of the NationalParks Service. This website
and the publication of the book One Hundred Summers (University
of Nebraska Press)
were made possible through the support of the Institute
for Museum and Library Services.

Admonishment: The materials presentedin
this website are intended for educational purposes and may not
be sold or reproduced for commercial gain.